I have just made a discovery on a sprig of asparagus. It is a cluster of eggs, about thirty in number, arranged in rows, in close contact, like the beads on a piece of embroidery. I recognize the eggs of a woodland Bug. The hatching took place some little time ago, for the family has not yet dispersed. The empty eggshells have remained in place without any loss of shape, except that their lids are open.
What a delightful collection of miniature vases in translucent alabaster, barely clouded with light grey! One would like to read a fairy-tale of the world of tiny things in which the fairies take tea out of such cups as these. The body of the vessel, a graceful oval cut square at the top, shows a delicate brown network of polygonal meshes. Imagine the top of a bird’s egg neatly removed, making a dainty little goblet of the remainder, and you have something very like the egg of the Bug. In either case there are the same gentle curves. [[189]]
Here the resemblance ceases. It is in the upper part of the egg that the insect displays its originality; its creation is a box with a lid. This slightly convex cover is ornamented, like the body of the jar, with a network of fine mesh; it is further embellished along the edge with an opal border. At the hatching it swings open as on a hinge and comes away all of a piece. Sometimes it falls off and leaves the jar wide open; sometimes it falls back into its normal position, once more closing the jar, which looks as though it were still intact. Lastly, the mouth is surrounded by very fine, thread-like attachments. These are, as it were, rivets to hold the lid in position, so as to close the vase hermetically.
We must not overlook one exceedingly characteristic detail. Quite close to the rim, inside the shell, there is always visible, after the hatching, a mark like a broad arrow, or a capital T, with the arms deflected like those of an anchor. What is the meaning of this infinitesimal detail? Is it a latch, a sort of lock with a bolt and hasp? Is it a potter’s mark, conferring a certificate of origin on the masterpiece? What a strange [[190]]effort of ceramic art merely to hold the egg of a Bug!
The young ones have not yet left the battery of jars from which they recently emerged. Gathered together in a heap, they are waiting for the bath of air and sunlight to harden them before dispersing and implanting their suckers where they please. They are plump, thickset, black, with the under surface of the belly red and the sides laced with the same colour. How did they get out of their jars? By what artifice did they raise the firmly-sealed lid? Let us try to find the answer to this interesting question.
It is the end of April. In the enclosure, just outside my door, the camphor-scented rosemaries are in full flower, bringing me visits from a multitude of insects which I can consult at any time. Various species of Pentatomæ abound, but do not lend themselves to precise observation, by reason of their wandering life. If I want to know exactly which egg belongs to which species or, above all, if I want to learn how the hatching is accomplished, it will not be enough to rely [[191]]upon chance inspections of the flowering shrubs. It will be better to resort to rearing the insects under a wire-gauze cover.
My captives, isolated according to species and represented each by a certain number of couples, give me hardly any trouble. All they need is a cheerful sun and a bunch of rosemary daily renewed. I add to the furnishing of the cage a few leafy twigs from various bushes. The insect will choose whichever suits her as the spot for laying her eggs.
By the first fortnight in May the imprisoned Bugs have provided me with eggs in excess of my hopes, eggs at once collected, together with their support, species by species, and placed in small glass tubes, where, unless I fail in vigilance, I shall easily be able to follow the delicate hatching-process.
It is really a beautiful, a most delightful collection, and would be quite worthy to figure beside the eggs of the bird, if larger dimensions came to the assistance of our feeble sight. From the moment we have to resort to the microscope, we allow the splendid to escape us. Let us magnify the Bug’s [[192]]egg under the lens and it will amaze us as surely as the Stonechat’s sky-blue egg, and perhaps even more. What a pity that such beauty escapes our admiration by its minuteness!
The shape is never a complete ovoid: that is the bird’s perquisite. The upper end of the Pentatoma’s egg is always finished off with a sudden truncation, into which a slightly convex lid is fitted, and we have before us a tiny ciborium, a delicious casket, an antique urn, a cylindrical cask with rounded ends, a full-bodied vase of Oriental porcelain, with ornaments consisting of bands, rosettes or traceries, varying according to the mother’s individual taste. Always, moreover, when the egg is empty, we find a most delicate fringe of herring-boned threads running round the mouth. These are the rivets to fasten the lid, which are pushed up and back at the moment when the new-born insect is released.